During 2003-04 there were over a billion passenger journeys on the UK rail network – more than at any time in the last 40 years. Faced with rapidly increasing demand, combined with an ageing and congested rail infrastructure, train operators have struggled to maintain historic levels of rail performance, let alone improve them.

Frontier’s modelling work for the DfT has however highlighted a number of key performance drivers that could be used to improve punctuality.